Show Notes

• Nora Gedgaudas website
• Nora Gedgaudas Previous Unstress Episode
• Primal Body, Primal Mind Book
• Rethinking Fatigue book
• Primal Fat Burner book 
• Price- Pottenger Foundation website
• Primal tightwad book
• Food Freedom Project website
• Helena Norberg Hodge Podcast episode
• Damon Gameau Podcast episode

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] – Introduction and acknowledgment of traditional custodians
• [00:01:56] – Welcoming back Nora Gedgaudas
• [00:02:35] – Nora’s new off-grid lifestyle in Idaho
• [00:06:06] – Discussion on the state of Portland and reasons for moving
• [00:12:12] – Challenges of off-grid living: power, water, and food
• [00:19:20] – Covid-19 pandemic insights and societal impacts
• [00:25:47] – Vaccine concerns and personal observations
• [00:33:08] – Overview of Weston A. Price and the Price-Pottenger Foundation
• [00:42:00] – Reversing nutritional deficiencies through diet
• [00:45:39] – Ethical meat consumption and its benefits
• [00:56:00] – Importance of cholesterol for brain function
• [01:00:04] – Debate on the role of fire in human evolution
• [01:08:04] – Concerns about fasting trends
• [01:16:00] – Cost-efficiency of a primal diet
• [01:22:00] – Protein intake and mTOR pathway implications
• [01:27:29] – Views on the carnivore diet
• [01:38:12] – The Food Freedom Project and building local communities
• [01:39:15] – Closing remarks and final thoughts

Nora Gedgaudas: Food Freedom Project and much more

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. Now, before I start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. And when I say past, I’m talking about the longest surviving culture on this earth, 65,000 years. And we have so much to learn about connection and respect for people and country. As any regular listener of this podcast would know, the two are inseparable. Well, today I had the pleasure of welcoming back one of my all time heroes, favourites, mentors and friend. Nora Gedgaudas. Nora is widely recognised as an expert on what is popularly referred to as the paleo diet. Now Nora’s an experienced nutritional consultant, speaker and educator. She’s been interviewed on national and international radio TV online summits on popular podcasts, including this one. She’s the author of some of international bestselling book Primal Body, Primal Mind Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and Longer Life. I truly believe one of the best books of nutrition that you could read, and I have read many, another book was Rethinking Fatigue what your adrenals are really telling you and what you can do about it, and primal fat burner. Now, Nora, is also on the board of the price point, your foundation. Look, we cover such a wide range of topics. Today. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Nora Gedgaudas. Welcome back to the show, Nora.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:01:57] Well, thank you for having me here, Ronnie. It’s a pleasure to be back.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:02] Nor are we. Yeah. We recently reconnected when you were giving, webinar a talk on ancestral diets for the Price Pottinger Foundation. And we’re going to be talking about both the Price Pottinger Foundation and ancestral diets. But I know that there’s been a change in your life. You you’ve got a new life off the grid. And, course, that’s for many people. They they dream about that to talk about that. But you’ve actually done it. Tell us a little bit about it. Tell us what what you’re doing and how you doing it.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:02:35] Well, I’m not sure whether you noticed or not. But the world kind of lost its mind about four years ago, and it was obvious very quickly that this was not just simply about some invisible, you know, microbial spook from China, but that this was really about a power grab. And I recognised the need immediately. To get out of the city where people were just not sane anymore. And, I did, search through about five different states. I thought it through very carefully and thoroughly, and I thought about it on and off for years anyway. I’m not completely new to this lifestyle, but I knew I needed to find something that was going to meet my needs long term. And if I was going to do that, I had to do it quickly. And so I set off and, searched through several different states and finally settled on, a beautiful off property. Kind of a plug and play situation that needed a lot of updating in the middle of, the mountains of Idaho. And best move I ever made. I don’t live in complete isolation. You know, I feel like I have a community around me. Certainly most of my neighbours live similarly to the way I do here, so we all feel relatively self-sufficient. There is, just kind of a strong sense of, of, value around feeling, freedom and, and living in alignment with nature. But it was a lot of work, you know, I, I most people, you know, like I’m in my 60s now, so, like most people my age are kind of doing the opposite. You know, they’re downsizing, they’re moving into town to a house and, you know, low square footage and all on one level, which is exactly what I sold to move here. And, yeah, I’ve gone and done the exact opposite. And. Yeah, you know, it’s a lot of work, trying to generate and and run, a homestead, but, it’s very satisfying work. And. And there is at least a rational illusion of a little bit of insulation. Which is, you know, all any of us can do is the best we can do to insulate ourselves as much as possible from all of the challenges and threats that are, you know, that are being imposed upon us, and some of which we’re imposing upon ourselves, you know, by being passive about it. And, you know, I still feel very active in terms of my desire to help others, but I had to kind of put the proverbial, mask upon myself first, you know, the kind that actually gives you oxygen, not the kind that deprives you of it. Right? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. You know, in order to be in a place where my mental health was going to be better served so that I had actually had something good to offer and not just, you know, sharing everyone else’s state of panic, could you?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:43] You were in Portland, Oregon, weren’t you?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:05:45] Yeah, I was that was East.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:47] Yeah. And that really went a little bit crazy of all. I mean, I have to say, when I think of America, I think the first word that comes to my mind is crazy, but but, sorry.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:05:59] Depends on where you are, really.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:01] You know, that’s a big country. It’s a big country.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:06:03] Actually. It’s a big world right now, full of craziness. But yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:06] Yeah. And very diverse. But but Portland was a particularly hotbed of kind of we heard a lot of stuff going on in Portland. Is that what was happening? It was a bit chaotic defunding police.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:06:18] Yeah. Other. Well, yes. So Portland, you know, when I first moved, there was a beautiful city, fabulous restaurants, an hour in less than an hour from some of the most gorgeous coastline anywhere in the United States, and less than an hour from the Cascade Mountains and and orchards and vineyards and everything all around and just nature, nature everywhere and beautiful. And Portland itself was a bit of a quirky place, and I kind of liked the quirkiness, you know? I don’t share that much of it, but I, I appreciate kind of the live and let live what felt like a live and let live atmosphere of people just sort of feeling free to be themselves, whatever that meant. And it seemed fine until it wasn’t fine. And, you know, really the, the Covid scare was something that just unhinged. You know, everybody in in different ways and yeah, the downtown area, you know, I’d heard about nightly riots, which went on for hundreds of days, not just like a couple of nights.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:21] Yeah.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:07:22] And a dear friend of mine who lived on the edge of town who’s, you know, we’re mutual friends with Castro and Austin Fitz. I don’t know if you know who she is, but she’s kind of a national treasure. We were introduced to each other by her, and, he was living on the edge of town, and he said, Nora, have you been downtown? And I said, no, I could kind of do without the rocket’s red glare. Thank you. And he said, no, you have to know what’s happening in your own city. You know, I’ll take you. I’ll make sure you’re okay. But we have to go. So he took me to town and we walked around and we saw young people who appeared to be all very well coordinated. They’re all dressed in kind of black ninja suits and carrying shields and, you know, gas mask and riot gear. And it was in the afternoon. So they were kind of clustering around and talking and planning the evening’s activities, shall we say. But, it wasn’t a whole lot happening. And they were a little bit scary, I have to say. You know, we walked right through the heart of it all. And I was, you know, hopeful that we weren’t going to get a brick up the backside of our heads for not wearing a mask out in the park, you know. But yeah, it was, kind of surreal. And, honestly, what had been a beautiful downtown area was now just all boarded up with graffiti everywhere, beautiful statues. We had this magnificent statue of an elk, this, big brass statue, huge thing that was just so magnificent. Then that got torn down in a riot and replaced with the George Floyd Memorial. And, you know, there was just it was, the feeling down there was just sort of surreal and. And yeah, the defund the police thing was also really scary. I mean, every single night, rioters were throwing, you know, bottles and cans and water bottles full of urine and, and and also water balloons full of similar, forms of excrement and whatever at these officers who were just basically kind of trying to keep the city from burning down. And. Yeah, if you lived in this in the area surrounding the city, outside of the main core of the city, you might not have seen a lot of that. But let’s just say if somebody were to try to break into your home during that time, actually, I’m sure the same is true now. You know, you try to call 911. Nobody’s coming because they were completely overwhelmed downtown. And this just went on and on and on. And I remember running into an officer walking with my friend Joel, and he looked a little startled as we approach. And it’s like, no, no, we’re okay. We’re okay. You know, we’re not we’re not a threat to you. We just want to talk to you and find out, how are you doing? How are you holding up? And the man literally broke down into tears, you know? Wow. So yeah, it was it was clear to me that the quality of life that I had enjoyed, there was just sort of done it and it wasn’t coming back. And, I couldn’t be around the social distancing insanity, which, as you well know, had no basis in anything. It was everything was designed to divide and to dehumanise and isolate and frighten everyone. And I was prepared to accept none of that. So I knew we had to go, and it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time. You know, while the market still allowed me to make something call my place, you know, and all of that. And, and then I had to spend a couple of years just trying to get this place up to speed, you know, and, again, it’s been an it’s been quite, an exhausting, exhausting, exhaustive journey. But it was exactly the right thing for me to do. Yeah. That said, you know, what I’m doing isn’t necessarily right for absolutely everybody. It’s it’s a lot of work. And you have to be willing to do without a little, a little bit of, you know, comfort, convenience and, that sort of thing. But for that matter, you know, we’re quite comfortable. You just have to work a lot. You know what was probably a good thing?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:40] I mean, you painted this horrendous picture of what would have been a horrendous scene, and, and now you are in there in the mountains in Idaho, and I’m. The contrast. Couldn’t be more. Stop. What what are some of the challenges you faced? I mean, power, water every day, you know, where are you getting your power from? Where are you getting your water from? Is the food coming from the land to you? What? How’s the how does it work? I mean, this is a dream for many people. But you’re living the dream. No. Well, it’s sort of.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:12:12] It’s sort of funny because not, you know, more than a couple of years ago, this was this people would have thought about. This is like Unabomber stuff, you know? You know, it’s kind of like, oh, you know, only crazy people and militia and whatever run out to the woods. But, you know, it seemed like a perfectly I mean, I had been watching events for quite a long time. I mean, I, you know, certainly more than 20 years I had been aware of kind of the disconnect between, you know, perceived and actual reality, you know, in politics and in a whole lot of other things. I watched my beloved environmental movement get hijacked by, by a climate cult that was hell bent on destroying humanity and, and Western civilisation. And, you know, I was watching a whole lot of things happen. So that said, you know, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to probably rely upon centralised government and centralised services for anything, you know, long term. Now, the property I bought thankfully came sort of plug and play. There’s, there is but a lot needed to be redone. But there was a sort of a solar electricity, you know, in place in, you know, there was an ancient battery bank and, and a single solar panel on the roof that I think fell off a covered wagon in the 70s. Still up there. It’s just not doing anything. And I had to put up some new stuff. And there’s also some hydroelectric here. And that’s a marvellous supplement because it’s it it’s working 24, seven year round from a spring fed creek that does that never goes dry. And, so it’s constantly trickling something into the battery bank so that there is an abundance of energy that, you know, is just sort of on demand and, and that we’re not having to overly worry about rationing it, you know. And then water wise, there are wild springs on the property and the wild springs gravity feed down the mountain right into the house.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:21] And things above that, are not, do you know, farmland above you? It’s it’s.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:14:28] No, it’s pristine.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:29] Water coming to me. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:14:32] Right. And it’s all, you know, through deep in the ground and all of that. So that’s again, also a very fortunate thing because we’re not having to rely on pumps to bring it into the house, you know, electric pumps or anything like that. It just gravity feeds down. And so and there, you know. Yeah, there’s, very mature, very highly prolific, with, ironically, an orchard here. But, I, I really see that is, is, you know, a marvellous bartering tool. And it’s just, it’s very healthy. We built a greenhouse and a big greenhouse and, and also planting beds that are above ground. Plenty birds have some, hydroponic stuff going inside the house. Year-Round. And the greenhouse is also a four season greenhouse. So, the winters here are actually relatively forgiving where I am. They’re they’re not bitterly cold at all. It’s almost always above freezing or right around freezing, and it kind of goes above and below and but there’s, you know, get quite a bit of snow. And I’m seeing a heavy snowfall today, which is quite beautiful to watch. But we’ll be around long as we’re really kind of into spring now moving.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:45] And I assume, I assume the, the, the you’re still having access to markets and you’re going out to farm as well because there’s protein coming.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:15:55] Right. Exactly. So in, in this neck of the woods, we’re a little ways from the nearest town, and it isn’t exactly a place where you’re going to find. I mean, you start talking about organics, and people look at you like you’re either some kind of communist or hippie or something. There is actually a health food store in that town, which is cool. But finding organics is, you know, not terribly easy. So there’s a huge catalogue, health catalogue called as your standard here in the States where, they, they specialise in natural products and, and things like animal feed and produce and all kinds of things you can order from them once a month. And there are other ways that you can order in organic things. Obviously, we’re trying to grow organic things also. It’s, you know, getting up to speed on your own food production is, you know, it’s a challenge. There are some, ducks and, they produce the best duck eggs I’ve ever had, and they’re able to get more than 90% of what they need, forage wise from the land. And then, you know, the ponds and whatever. And we have, meat rabbits, which is a whole other thing. And everybody, you know, I know what people kind of jump on me about is the whole rabbit starvation thing. If you’re talking about eating wild rabbits. Yes. The meat is so lean. You don’t want to live off of that. But meat rabbits, you can get as much fat on a rabbit as you can a chubby chicken. You know, it just depends on the breed and how they’re fed and all of that, but they’re. But they’re, herbivores, and they can they can subsist off of, whatever you’re growing on your property to feed them. They don’t require a lot of protein, you know, the way chickens, you know, do, which are little dinosaurs. I guess ducks are, too. But, ducks are great foragers, and so. But they’re doing super well. How.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:53] And you stop them flying away for the winter.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:17:56] They’re domestic ducks so that they don’t fly. I mean, more than. A few feet, one foot off the ground. You know, you’re just.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:03] Okay, right? Yeah.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:18:05] So. And I have, you know, a fenced in area for them, but it’s a very, very large area that they have to roam around in and play in and swim in. And it’s it’s ideal for them. But, you know, we have also a lot of tasty wildlife roaming about any at any given time. I can walk around, look out the windows. There can be whitetail deer somewhere. There are mule deer in the area too. Not so much on the property. Elk. Moose. I’ve seen moose on the property. And then, of course, you know, we have bears, and we have, mountain lions and bobcats. So, you know, the occasional lynx and, you know, golden eagle. So, I mean, it’s wilderness. It’s a wilderness environment.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:18:48] What a what a contrast, to your experience, what you described in, in Portland. And it’s interesting for you to say, you know, this has been a crazy time in the last four years, and it’s a story that you’re not unfamiliar with. Because I’m also not, I mean, I’ve been following this since 1985 when, my dental profession said, Mercury was perfectly fine, and I explored whether it really was or wasn’t. And lo and behold, it’s actually toxic. And what a breakthrough that is.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:19:21] Yeah, right. Yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:22] But but but I mean, what I’m my point here is that questioning authority has been part of my journey over the last 40 years. But even I, knowing everything that I knew and I’ve written about in my own book about the role of the chemical, food and pharmaceutical industry to which I would now add media, both mainstream media and social media. Yeah. I was shocked by by you call it the power grab. But I would add to that the big the most successful business model in human history. Sure. And, and I was really surprised. And I think this is a story that is easy to miss, but once you hear it, it’s impossible to ignore. And I think what.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:20:06] Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:08] Consequences. And I think one of the things that’s happened there was if I had to put a figure on on who was following this story for the last 20, 30 or 40 years, it may well have been ten, five, ten, 15%, maybe 5%.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:20:22] That’s generous.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:23] Generous. I think it’s 5% maybe of the population. But now, post pandemic, I think that number has crept up to 15%. Would you say? I’m just saying.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:20:34] I actually I would say much higher, much.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:37] Higher. I take I would like to hear.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:20:39] Well, so I think, you know, at the outset of the big scare. Right. I think probably 30% or so, we’re we’re full in. We’re just freaking freaking out and doing whatever Fauci told them to do. And, you know, which changed, of course, daily, many times, constant whiplash. And, I, I understood that this was all a prelude to an injection they wanted everyone to have. I knew that gates was planning, you know, this whole IT 2020 thing that that was in the works. And I remember thinking, they’re expecting us all to have a digital ID that is, kind of, vaccine passport type thing by 20. What what are they planning, or how are they planning to get everyone to go along with that? Because I knew a majority of people would not go along with that. And then one of course, everything started up. I immediately recognised, I mean, look, they had been attempting for the last decade or two to sell us on pandemics in the making, you know, bird flu, swine flu, you know, Zika, you know, just, you know, every little thing every year. Sometimes they tried it, sometimes they sold a few people, an injection or two with that, and sometimes they didn’t and sometimes they didn’t, but, but I recognise it was they were really playing for all the marbles this time. And so I think that there was another kind of, you know, 30% or so, maybe 30 plus percent that were kind of sitting on the fence and not knowing quite what to think or, or or saying, oh, this is just a bunch of bull bull crap. And, but, you know, they were willing to go along to get along, right? Just sort of passively going along and standing in their little circles with their lives, darting over a piece of paper over their face. So, and, but, you know, when we invited, you know, people over, like, service people to do things, they’d show up with their mask and their gloves and whatever. It’s like, look, I, you know, if you’re frightened and you want to have that thing on your face, that’s fine. But just, you know, just so you know, you know, you’re welcome to take it off. And we’d kind of prefer it, actually. And usually it was off by the time, you know. Yeah, I wasn’t even done with my service and they had it torn off their face. So probably 75%, at least of everyone that I spoke to in Portland. Right. The belly of this beast of the compliant beast agreed with me completely in the. They were all quite angry about what was happening. They all recognise they didn’t make sense. There was something highly suspicious about it. But again, most people were willing to go along to get along. They just they didn’t want to because the very small number of people that were bought into the fear were out of their minds and ready to tear your face off in a public place if you dared, you know, to show anything more than just the whites of your eyes, you know, in a store or whatever else. And nobody really wanted to deal with that kind of, you know, that, that kind of craziness. And so people just kind of went along and I would say there was good 25 to 30% or more of people who just said, no, no, hell no. Not just no, but hell no. I was certainly one of those people. And most of the people I would say, within my social circles around the world were in agreement with that. But that wasn’t going to be a majority were where I was. And so, you know, I think that now what we have, I would say well over half of the population at this point, I think, is aware that they’ve been lied to, that they’ve been sold a bill of goods that has done more to destroy their quality of life than enhance or protect it in any way. Unfortunately, some of them have, you know, succumbed to some of what they were, what they felt forced to do. And, so, at least in terms of where, and not just where I live now, because where I live now, like, everybody’s pretty much aware of what’s going on, and nobody’s willing to put up with government overreach in any manner, shape or form. It’s rather nice, you know, life is normal. And when I first got to this area, you know, I saw children’s playgrounds with children laughing children and smiling faces, and you could see their faces because nobody was wearing masks around here. And, you know, it’s interesting. I was speaking to some of the, proprietors as well as one proprietor of a shop in town, and, they didn’t know of anyone of literally anyone that succumbed to, quote unquote, Covid that lots of people claimed that they had it. I don’t think anybody really knows for sure, honestly, because there are no accurate tests with which to diagnose it. So, you know, but they, you know, lots of people felt like they had the rebranded flu, but, she actually knew of five people who succumbed to the injections in a town of, like, no more than about 3000 people.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:48] Hang on. When you say succumbed, you mean died?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:25:50] I mean died, yeah. You know, and we know that at least five times more than that. You have injuries and disabilities of some kind and or and or on the way to cancers and, you know, potential stroke and cardiovascular problems and certainly autoimmunity, big time. But in terms of, you know, we’re talking about relatively small community some distance away from where I live, you know, and five people, somebody knows five people personally that died as a direct result of the injections. Wow. I mean, wow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:27] I mean, that would have been enough glow, nationally to put a halt to all vaccinations in the past.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:26:35] Yes, it should have been.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:36] Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in the past when they started, when different, like for the rotavirus or for other viruses where they experimented with, well, they had vaccines and they had that kind of adverse reaction. They just stopped the whole program.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:26:53] Right? Usually no more than about 50 deaths. And, you know, somebody pulled the plug. But this was a very different thing. And of course, you know full well we weren’t even talking about a vaccine by any standard definition.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:05] Yeah.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:27:06] Yeah. Right. We’re talking about gene therapy, you know, genetic modification injection. I don’t even want to call it a therapy because that sounds therapeutic is anything but. Yes. And and the other odd thing is that we’re talking about four different companies that came to that, that that all developed their products based on the same, or similar platform and, and targeting the same aspect of the so-called pathogen, which was the spike protein. And in, you know, if you listen to somebody like Mike Eden talk about this, you know, who was involved in, in drug development for his whole career as, you know, as head of scientific head at Pfizer, back way back then, back in the day, the odds of four different competing pharmaceutical companies deciding upon the same approach. Was next to impossible by chance. Right. You know, they should have been. Nobody used the regular vaccine platform. You know, they felt like they had to do something. Warp speed. So what do they do? They choose a brand new technology that had an abysmal safety record in animals. Literally killed all animals that had ever had never been tested on, had never been allowed to be used in human beings prior to this. And now all of a sudden, that’s the platform. Everybody chose the genetic modification platform, whether it was mRNA based or whether it was adeno vector, you know, DNA adenovirus, you know, vector type technology. And, every aspect of what went into those injections was, you know, had a track record of harm and potential harm. And so there was nothing good that was going to come from this. And yet no one was allowed to question it. Nobody was a b a lot a lot of people felt like they weren’t allowed to refuse it. You know, I think everyone had a choice to some degree or other. Even people claim they didn’t.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:14] And, Norah, just to remind our listener, the company that we were putting our trust in there had received the biggest fine in criminal history of $3 billion for fraud and illegal marketing. But somehow that didn’t matter. And the other thing there was no.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:29:29] They were totally true. They were Boy Scouts when it came to rejection.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:33] And the other thing was, we will never know what the control group, how the control group compared. I mean, in science you have a control group.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:29:43] You and I are a control group, Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:44] Well, you know, a control group. And and you have the treatment group. But after four months, Pfizer. No. Pfizer. They listed they injected the control group because they felt it was unethical.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:29:59] It would be unethical not to. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:01] Exactly. So we have there.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:30:03] Will be no official long term data to show. And that was again all very I mean, it’s it’s demonstrably intentional. I mean, there’s like there’s there’s no benign means of interpreting anything that went on. And yeah, you know, a lot of these companies were convicted felons out of a gay, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:23] Repeat.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:30:23] And Moderna had no track record whatsoever producing any kind of product for human use. Heavily invested in by Bill Gates and Tony Fauci, of course. So, yeah, they got to stick a whole lot of people. And with a particularly high dose of gram RNA, modified RNA, we’re not talking about natural immunity. We’re talking about a synthetic modified RNA. And, you know, the results have been nothing short of biblically catastrophic. You know, this has been a black swan event to end all black swan events, you know, in terms of the uptick in human mortality, particularly in the Western world. But, you know, world worldwide, except, of course, you know, much of Africa, which which didn’t have the injections and didn’t have any meaning, you know, almost no deaths at all of anything.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:17] Yes, I know it’s extraordinary, isn’t it, that I mean, the word vaccination has also been hijacked so that any any criticism, you’re immediately labelled an anti-vaxxer. But, right in my, in my memory, the reason I’ve had vaccines in the past, like typhoid, cholera, smallpox, you know, was I know, I know, we talked about each of those. I could see you grimace. But anyway, yeah, that’s again the rationale behind that was so that I wouldn’t get the condition that I was being vaccinated for, and I wouldn’t transmitted on to anybody else, both of which were not part of the outcome of this vaccination.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:31:57] Well, and they weren’t even the part of the tent or the you know, they knew when they released this that it was no, that they weren’t they weren’t making any claims actually about at the time about safety or efficacy, you know, certainly efficacy. The safety thing was, was a joke from the outset because in the control group, two people got Covid and in the vaccine group, one person got Covid. That was 100%, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:25] Yes, that’s right. That’s the.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:32:26] Efficacy or one of.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:27] The wonderful, you know, relativity relative and absolute game, you know, relative risk versus absolute risk, you know. Exactly. But listen, Nora, it’s.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:32:38] And.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:32:39] This brought us to here. I mean, you know, we, the way we reconnected after several years and I was so excited to do this, was to attend. And I arrived a little bit late for the the webinar that you did for Price Pottinger Foundation. And a lot of people who listen to this podcast will certainly have heard us talk about Western High Price. But but I wondered if we might just give people like a quick, you know, overview of who is Western High price and who is the Price Pottinger Foundation.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:33:09] Well, you know, Western price was, of course, probably the most famous nutritional pioneer of all time. He was president to what was used to be called the National Dental Association here in the United States. And, and, I believe this was, you know, in the 1920s, whatever he was noticing that the children of some of his adult patients were showing up with teeth that were occluded and having a lot of problems with cavities and things like that, they actually had to develop orthodontics because prior to that time period, there was no need. There had been no need. And he was also, a bit of an anthropologist. He had long heard about the excellent health and dentition and, and skeletal structure of, what he referred to as primitive people groups, you know, indigenous people around the world. And also, you know, kind of more traditional communities that were doing things the way they’d done things for a few thousand years. And. Eating a very natural kind of diet based on whatever was available locally and not relying upon what he called the foods of modern commerce, which like sugar and flour and all of that. And so he had a theory, and he set out across the world and travelled about 100,000 miles over ten years at a very unique time in history, where we had just developed air travel. And yet there were quite a number of these indigenous groups, all still thriving all over the world and, traditional groups still thriving. And he had the opportunity to go and visit them wherever they were and, study their health and study, the what it was they were eating, and also took samples and analysed it to the extent that it was possible to analyse the nutritional content of the sweets during that time. And, you know, he found a tremendous, you know, certain variety of diets among healthy populations and a lot of people that follow Western Price’s work kind of, you know, have sort of arrived at this common conclusion that, well, all you have to do is just eat real food and you’re healthy. Well, you’re probably ahead of the curve if you’re eating, just eating real food. But. You know, he asked himself the important question of what did all the people eating and diets that kept them healthy? What did they all have in common? What did their diets all have in common? Number one, he found that he had not been able to find a single vegan population anywhere that all the healthiest. And that really disappointed him because he wanted that. As a contrast, he was hoping to find some kind of indigenous people group that ain’t nothing but plants, you know? But he couldn’t. It just didn’t exist. All the healthiest people eat as many animal source foods as were available to them in the greatest variety possible, and also the most. The second thing was that all the most important foods, the most venerated places, the foods that were most sought after, and particularly in people who in, in pregnant women and whatever else, were the foods that were highest in, in fat and fat soluble nutrients that are, you know, that characterise animal source fats. And, they are in in my mind lies the foundational basis for what constitutes the healthiest possible human diet. But those things have to be a part of the equation. And the rest of it is just because somebody was able to put something in their mouth to swallow it and not dropped, it, doesn’t necessarily mean that food was optimal for them then or for us now. And in my work, one of the things that I wanted to do was, was kind of look at things like longevity research and whatnot, to find out what sorts of principles were involved in in healthy as long lived. You know, they were mostly doing animal studies, but everything in yeast, from yeast to primates, and there were some principles that were able to sort of dovetail or overlap with some of what price had found. And, I also wanted to take into account the kind of world that we live in today and some of the challenges we have that our indigenous ancestors could never have even imagined. And so, I took, a slight diversion from, from Weston Price, but I still think of him as easily the most important pioneer nutritional pioneer that ever lived. And the Price Pottinger Nutrition Foundation, which is not to be confused with the Western Price Foundation, which is, kind of run by Sally Fallon and mostly her interpretation, her own personal interpretation of Western Price’s work. The Price Pottinger Nutrition Foundation is actually a 71 year old organisation. We own the entire repository of Western Price’s work. We own his manuscripts, we own his letters, we own his photographs, his famous photographs. We also, on the repository of work of about a dozen other nutritional pioneers, but certainly better known among them, really, you know, and also, Frances Pottinger, who was famous for his work with cats, you know, and the diets of cats and how process versus natural diets for cats, you know, the effect that that had upon each, you know, generation that he studied eating those foods. And, you know, we own his footage. We, we actually have held some of his cats in my hands. You know, he actually they actually have the cats in, you know, the office stored in them in, in the back room, the skeleton.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:56] So did they collaborate? Did they collaborate? Were they similar time or.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:39:01] They were a somewhat similar time period? But no, they weren’t necessarily considered collaborators. But what they found were bits of information that were very interesting from a nutritional perspective. Price kind of gave us the perspective of what constitutes a natural, healthy human diet. Right. And was able to demonstrate that in humans, one of the things that one of the real values of Pottinger is work in my mind, although he certainly was able to demonstrate how the health in subsequent generations of cats would either, would either flourish or decline relative to how unnatural the foods were that the cats were eating. Right? Yeah. These different groups of cats, some eating cooked food, some eating natural raw foods, some eating cooked food, some eating heavily processed food. And, over the subsequent generations were where the real changes were observed. Now, price photographed some of this in in people groups that were in culture eating into kind of western, culture and, you know, city living and, you know, eating more of the foods of commerce. And their children were showing up with, with bizarre skeletal abnormalities and, terrible teeth and terrible health, you know, mentally and physically.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:23] Well, no where you say, you say bizarre skeletal abnormalities, which are kind of.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:40:28] The norm that we’re.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:29] Actually describing almost 95% of the population, because one of the most compelling images I know from that photographic record was in the Melanesia or Malaysia, where somebody was had broad face, lots of room for all 32 of their teeth. Structurally perfect, no degenerative diseases. And then one generation later, the child has narrow jaws and crowded teeth. So this idea of I’ve got I’ve got mum’s teeth and dad’s jaws is rubbish. It really was. So what you’re describing is terrible mal inclusions and abnormalities. You’re describing 95% of us.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:41:11] Right. And what Pottinger ended up finding was that by the 10th generation of the cats that were reading a processed food diet, they couldn’t even reproduce anymore. Wow. And so that was obviously, you know, a really chilling message to what can happen to humanity eating a processed food diet, whatever. And of course, that’s what they’d like us all eating now, fake meat and, you know, processed bugs and, you know, whatever else.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:43] Would. And and, Nora, we’re crap. We’ve done, programs on fertility. And it’s rather sobering to know that 1 in 6 couples who are trying to have children, are infertile. And that is 5050 split between male males and females.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:42:00] And we know that there are fertility consequences through the injections and that that adds to the complication of, you know, the complicated nature of this picture. But one of the really wonderful messages behind Pottinger work was that he found that if he took something like a ninth generation processed food eating cat and started to feed them the way cats are designed to be fed, giving them what is for them a natural diet. Literally, it only took four generations to bring them back to a state of robust, normal health and proper skeletal structure and all of that. So there’s a very hopeful message in that, that if we start doing the right things, we can reclaim a future for our species. Right. That is that that has, some claim to health. Right. And, hopefully, hopefully good fertility again. And so this is I think that these messages are incredibly important, especially where so much money is getting pumped into messages around all of the, you know, the human health and planetary health benefits of veganism and all of that kind of thing which has no basis whatsoever in human, you know, human, indigenous history, and or our physiological makeup. There’s like literally no basis for this, but there’s a lot of money getting pumped into documentaries. You know, we’re talking about, you know, very minute percentage of the human population considering themselves to be truly vegan. It’s it’s creeping up because of the propaganda. But that said, you know, usually within a decade, 75 to 85% of people who have adopted that way of eating have abandoned it, and almost always due to health related problems. And there were two different studies that I cite in my more recent book on that, in terms of, you know, studying what happens to people who adopt that way of eating for prolonged periods of time. You know, I worked in my private practice with the brain for over 20 years, and I can tell you that the most damaged, intractable nervous systems that I encountered were those of almost, almost, I mean, almost to the last one of hardcore vegetarians and especially vegans who just were at a place where they could barely live in their own skin anymore and had severe problems with autoimmune conditions and, neurological, I mean, lots of neurological problems, major anxiety issues and feelings of agitation. And the problem is that past a certain point, there are certain deficiencies that can’t necessarily be effective, certain deficiencies that can’t necessarily be remediated, you know, like B12 deficiency long term, you know, we can store B12 for maybe five years. And then after that, if you’re not getting it in your diet, then you’re, you’re generating, frequently irreversible neurological problems. And, the percentage of people that are, you know, that are vegan, that end up suffering. Issues with anaemia to some degree or another. Whether it’s haem iron anaemia or whether it’s B12 anaemia, B6 anaemia. You know, again, it’s it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere in your health and that unless you got that under some kind of control.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:39] I think it’s really interesting the, the did very interesting and disturbing because I believe that vegans the ethically the ethics of treating animals well is something that I totally share. And as Alan Savoury, one of my heroes, has said, don’t blame the resource meat, blame the way the resource is managed. And there is a difference between, grain fed, factory farm meat and free range and that.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:46:09] But I mean, the health of the meat and fat we consume depends entirely upon the health of the animal that meat or fat came from. Right. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:16] And what’s good for the animal? What’s good for the animal is good for us and good for the planet. To me, that’s a win win. But I have two questions that I always ask vegans. I’ll ask you this. I know you know the answer to this course, but one of them is, you know, 6 million years ago, when we split off from the chimpanzees, Australopithecus had a brain size of about 4 to 500 cc’s. Then about a million or so years later, Homo habilis, or 2 million years. Homo habilis was 700 cc’s. Homo erectus, a thousand cc’s. Homo sapiens, 1450 cc’s or so. How did we do that?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:46:54] How do you. Actually, it has not been an upward, totally upward going back since roughly, you know, Cro-Magnon humans actually had, their brains were significantly larger. And our current brain over the last 10,000 years or so, has shrunk by about 11%, or about the size of a, of a, you know, of a tennis ball. I don’t know about you, but if that if that were me, I’d. I’d miss that. Right. So, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:21] But but but the question is, how did that happen? How did that happen?

Nora Gedgaudas [00:47:26] Right. So we stopped, we we stepped out onto the savanna, swung out of the trees, you know, and, we began, consuming. Well, we went through there were radical changes in, in the environment, in the climate at that time. And that forced some primates to try to seek out a different type of existence. Right? I mean, chimpanzees, their brain capacity hasn’t changed appreciably in the last 7 million years. Right. Because there’s the leading those leaves in bananas. Right. Although it’s interesting, all great apes eat some meat, with the exception of, of gorillas, you know, which actually have a brain size about three times smaller than what you would expect for a primate of their size, because they’re, they’re, they’re plant eating. So their brain capacity is nowhere near as large as it should be for their physical size as a result of that. But all other great apes hunting eat some meat. But we took on, you know, I mean, right back even to Lucy. You know, they found that she was busting open femurs to try to get it marrow and, and and scavenging on carcases. And we began eating a much more meat rich and fat rich diet. One of the things that we forget also is that prior to about ten, 12,000 years ago, we shared this planet with at least another 120, species of megafauna. You know, these enormous animals that had very high fat content that were our preferred source of meat and fat for the majority of our evolutionary history. And like even in the Mediterranean regions, where you would have guessed that people would have been focussed more on seafood and fish and all that by far, far and away they were preferring things like our economy, woolly mammoth meat and things like that. I mean, and and think about it, you know, you take down one of these massive animals and you’ve got a meat supply that’s going to last for a good long while. And, they would have gobbled up every last bit of it. And so as an evolving species that, figured out that with our possible pumps, we could create, weapons and things that would, you know, take us from being scavengers to hunters. You know, we took on a diet that, by by all accounts from stable isotopic, you know, research that has been done on the remains of ancient humans, finding out what what where were we getting our protein? In some cases, we were higher level carnivores than bears, wolves, foxes or other, you know, predators of the day. And again, I think it’s because as humans, we were smart enough to develop technology to be able to take those enormous animals down. You know, I’ve studied wolves and I’ve lived with wolves in the wild, and I’ve followed them on their hunts, and I’ve watched what they do. And, you know, they’re sort of relegated to going after whatever is easiest for them to catch, which tends to be older animals, weaker animals, you know, or, you know, like, you know, like the, the young, these animals that are rather fleet of foot and those that are maybe diseased or injured in some way. And so but humans didn’t do that. We hunted selectively for the fattest, savviest animals we could find. Something that I didn’t discover, sadly, before and until right after I’d published my last book, was I had been looking up cave paintings to just use in my talks and things like that. And something I started finding, overwhelmingly, were that the any time that these cave artists were depicting, you know, like, say, predators or whatever, they the depictions of them were relatively accurate. You look at the, the drawings of, cave lions and show me these beautiful, muscular, proportional, animals that are very accurately depicted. But you look at the kinds of animals that we would have hunted for food, and they look like something that ought to be floating down the middle of the street in a Macy’s day parade. You know, you got this huge big, round body and these tiny little stick legs. And it seemed to me that these were maybe the sort of shamanic vision boards, you know, of idealising what it was that we hoped to successfully hunt. Right. The fattest we went after as human hunters, the fattest, sexiest animals we could say that we could successfully procure. And, those were it was much more dangerous to go after the fat, sassy, healthy animals. But it was also much more rewarding. And, you know, anthropologists, the Israeli anthropologist Miki Bender, it created a wrote a fantastic paper years ago called Man the Fat Hunter. There’s a more recent paper as well, and I can’t remember the name of it. I’ve got it somewhere in my library, but but just basically showed that we hunted selectively for fat. And it’s the very fats that made up these animals that ended up comprising the parts of our brain that makes up that, you know, the composition of a, of the brain that makes us, you know, the most human, you know, that it’s given us our outstanding, capacity for cognition and, and creativity and, self-awareness and all of that. The dominant fatty acid in the brain of a of a conventional, you know, sort of non-human primate is omega six based for us, it’s omega three based. And I’m not talking about chia seed or flax seed. You know, alpha linolenic acid based. I’m talking about EPA especially. Well, mainly DHEA based, the most elongated form of omega three that we’re designed to get from animals that have synthesised it for us, people, anybody who thinks, I mean, there’s a little bit of lore going around and I’m not going to name names, but like what you see, walnuts represent, you know, look very similar to human brain. And it’s because they have good brain fats in them. No they don’t they don’t have anything really in them that is going to feed your human brain. You are going to find alpha linolenic acid, which goes rancid pretty, pretty quickly. But yeah, if you’re eating fresh walnuts, okay, that’s considered an essential fatty acid because we can’t synthesise it. But technically speaking, the our capacity to synthesise EPA and DHA, most people don’t do that at all. And those that can are lucky to convert maybe 3% of that alpha linolenic acid into EPA and probably none into DHEA at all. So for all those vegans out there, you know, if DHEA and EPA are not in your diet, they’re not in your brain either. You’re not designed to synthesise those with any real efficiency. The other thing our brain needs in significant abundance, and that actually makes up about 25% of the supply of this substance in the human body is the, is cholesterol, of course, you know, which is absolutely essential. Well, it’s the hallmark of animal life, for starters, it’s what distinguishes us from plants. We have cholesterol. There was a few years ago where they had found, some kind of fossil at the bottom of the ocean, a fossilised something or other that had been alive. And it was the oldest previously living, you know, fossilised, specimen that had ever been found to that point. And they were trying to figure out if it was plant or animal. They didn’t know. And in the analysis, they found the signature of cholesterol, in there. And they went, okay, animal. It was an animal. That’s how that’s what distinguishes us. And a fourth of all, the cholesterol in your body is in your brain. And it can better be there or your brain doesn’t work right. And it’s even though every cell in our bodies has a means of manufacturing, it’s our supply just about every. So it’s not an efficient process. And it’s sort of interesting when we consume cholesterol. You would think if it was a toxic substance, our body would work really hard at getting rid of it. But that’s not what happens. Our body is very, very efficient at conserving it and recycling it. You know, the liver generates LDL, which is of course not cholesterol. It’s a, you know, low density lipoprotein, which is a carrier vehicle for cholesterol, which carries cholesterol and other fat soluble nutrients out into the body to do various things and make hormones and or whatever. And then, this material gets picked up by high density lipoprotein and carried back to the liver, where it gets reconverted back into low density lipoprotein again. It goes back out again. The only form of cholesterol there really is only one cholesterol. And it’s essential to all animal life. And it’s certainly essential to human cognition and human immune function and a whole lot of other things. I worry way more about people whose cholesterol levels are too low than to my, you know, too high, which is an arbitrary distinction.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:56:56] And and important for all hormones as well. Right.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:57:00] No, we need it for sex hormones. We need it for cognition. We need it for our immune function. We need it for the integrity of our cell structure and, for the way our bioelectric system operates and what’s also known as an acute phase reactive, meaning that if there is, your body is invoking an inflammatory response, cholesterol goes on an uptick in order to combat the inflammatory processes. And so when I see, you know, quote unquote, high cholesterol in a person, it’s kind of like the check engine light comes on on the dashboard. To me, it’s, you know, I’m happy cholesterol is there doing its job, trying to deal with some kind of inflammatory process that’s clearly underway. But you pull over to the side of the road, you lift up the hood, you try to figure out what’s going on. You don’t go and unscrew the damn light bulb to fix the problem with it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:52] I quote that analogy so often, I love that. Nora, isn’t that great? Yeah it is, it is. Which is exactly right. You don’t solve a problem by removing the globe on the.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:58:02] No, it’s like. It’s like blaming the firemen that come to put out the fire. Right? Yeah. Getting rid of the firemen and then blaming them for the fire and, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:10] But which brings me to another one. Another one. Nora. And I mean meat. Our consumption of meat was so integral to that brain development. But about a million and a half years ago, our control of fire and being able to cook stuff made it a little more bioavailable. Is that true or not? Do you? How do you say that? Do you think.

Nora Gedgaudas [00:58:31] Our brains work? No, I don’t think so. Okay. I actually think that the fire theory is, is greatly misplaced and and in part is based upon the way that fire made plant foods a little easier to digest and absorb and all of that. But in order for us to have the smarts to figure out how to create and utilise, you know, technology like fire or any other kind of technology, our brains would have had to have been pretty substantially enlarged at that point in order to figure that out in the first place. Right. And, you know, I think that it’s kind of like, obviously like wild if if our diets if our if we were truly dependent, if we had to be dependent on blood sugar is our primary source of you, there would be a truth to that fire, theory, in other words, like tubers and things like that, that that were not edible, or digestible to us suddenly became edible and digestible. And that’s part of where that theory went, was that, oh, you know, now we can digest and eat, now we can eat potatoes and we can cook, you know, plant foods that are higher in starch and protein. And now now, you know, now human beings are going to be smarter and more evolved. And, that makes no sense at all. And the fact is, is that our brains operate better and far more efficiently upon fat than they do. Sugar?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:00:05] But does this fire, this fire make the meat more available to us? So there are just that. I mean.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:00:13] It’s it’s a debateable thing, so. Right. So they’re like they’re hydrophilic. I mean, so fire has a denaturing effect on protein, right? Which actually might make it. A little harder depending upon the kind of protein you’re talking about. But. It has a, raw meat has hydrophilic colloids in it. That allowed for the absorption. Kind of makes me a little more like a sponge to be able to absorb gastric juices and things like that, and that then could allow it to break apart more easily. I mean, if you’re looking at a, at a juicy, raw piece of meat versus a piece of shoe leather, what do you think your body’s going to have an easier time of assimilating, right. And I find that if I eat like a make a meal out of carpaccio, for instance, or something, which I really love.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:01:05] Yummy.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:01:07] You know, I don’t feel I don’t feel like I’m digesting for hours and hours and hours after the fact. Right? It’s not it’s not a happy feeling. And so I don’t put a whole lot of stock into the theory that fire is what made us human. No, I think we had to be human in order to make use of fire, that our brains were already substantially large.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:01:30] And naturally, they they that kind of adds to the idea that what people valued most was not the muscle meat, but the internal organs, which would have been much easier to eat raw.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:01:43] Right, right. That’s true too. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah. So, you know, certainly if if you’re a Cro-Magnon human, you know, trying to march your way across, you know, Europe during one of the last periods of glacial advance, you know, fire heating, being able to heat up that frozen meat, heat that made up. And, you know, we we found that. We enjoy that. You know, it it warmed us on the inside to eat things that were cooked. But I our brains were already pretty substantially large by the time we began making use of fire for really anything. And yeah, fire opened up a lot of doors in it, and it broadened our ability to eat more things. For better or worse, you know? But that’s that’s the way I look at it anyway.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:02:37] Now, the second question, that was the first question about, okay, it’s about, cranial development. And I think we’ve covered, a lot of great points there. I think you already answered the second question in in Western AI prices. And this is a question I always ask vegans because I may have missed it. I could be wrong, but has there ever been a human culture that has thrived and survived generation after generation on a vegan diet?

Nora Gedgaudas [01:03:05] We have nothing in the fossil record to show that, and there’s certainly nothing regarding our physiological makeup to reflect that at all. You know, we have a hydrochloric acid based digestive system and herbivores have, you know, fermented live based digestive system that is based upon bacteria working on cellulose and other difficult to digest plant, plant materials. And they have these huge vats of bacteria in their gut, whether they have four stomachs or whether it’s just one, like even chimpanzees, and what look like big beer guts and gorillas who look like, you know, you know, like, like big beer drinkers or something, because they had these huge fermentation vats that, that then take and transform that plant material and enhance its nutritional value before it’s actually, you know, then absorbed and utilised. And for us, only about 20% of our gut is is, you know, consecrated to the process of fermentation. That’s our large intestine, which is, again, far smaller than that of even a chimpanzee, which is supposedly our closest primate relative, where they have a majority of their gut, that is, that is geared towards fermentation. For us, very small portion of our digestive system is geared towards fermentation, and all the fermentation that takes place there is designed to create nutrition for the cells of the colon itself, pretty much, you know, as opposed to making, you know, like if you take a cabbage and you ferment that cabbage, you’re going to generate maybe 300 times more vitamin C, you know, through fermentation than you’d get from the raw cabbage itself. Right? But at any rate, interestingly, there’s actually many times at least something like three times more vitamin C in in raw liver, for instance, than, than you’d get in the same quantity, of an apple. You know, of, of eating something like an apple and that’s and that’s the other thing that, you know, when you cook food, you’re not just the nature, the protein, which is it makes it a little harder for our digestive juices to work on. But you’re also, you know, destroying a lot of water soluble nutrients in that same process. And so, you know, the nutritional value of uncooked meat is probably far greater than, than that of cooked. Although, you know, I like my steaks rare, I don’t you know, I do like carpaccio and that kind of thing. But, you know, if I cook my chicken and, you know, and pork and things like that, but I don’t have any illusions about the fact that I probably, you know, dumplings to reduce some of the nutrient content through that cooking process.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:06:00] Now, now, you know, you mentioned that and I agree with you. I’ve said this often that Western a price is probably the most significant research done in nutrition over the last 100 years. There was so many lessons to be learned from his research about the power of good of of a nutrient dense diet, but I’ve read I’ve been following nutrition for 40 years, and I have said this many times too, that your book, Primal Body, Primal Mind was is still continues to be one of the best books on nutrition I’ve ever read. And if you people have not read it, it’s an absolute must read. Well, I guess when we talk about primal body from mind ancestral diets almost, an oxymoron to say what’s changed in the world of ancestral diets? What’s the latest trend?

Nora Gedgaudas [01:06:50] Right. Well, our world has changed. Yes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:06:52] Sorry, but that was my question. How do we adapt to our modern world from this ancient wisdom?

Nora Gedgaudas [01:06:58] Well, you know, so I’ll tell you something that, concerns me a bit. Is the fad of fasting, And and I think if you’re doing this modified approach where you’re eating within an eight hour window during a given day, that’s all fine and good as long as you don’t have blood sugar problems. If you do, that’s going to feel hellish for you. And, it also sort of implies that it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you eat within a certain window. Right. There’s that. And and there’s so much now around the. Well, there’s backlash too, because there was a recent paper published that suggested that all fasting is dangerous and it’ll this, that and the other thing. But most of what’s going on in the public sphere is like this. This whole like fasting is virtuous. Oh, yeah. I only eat a couple times a week. You know, people are lots and lots of people I know are do going on regular fasts. And, and the issue that I have with it is that fasting is not a nutritional strategy. Right? It’s that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:08:05] Each trip.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:08:06] It’s very cheap and it attaches virtue to basically to not eating, to not having food. Like the less food you eat, the healthier you are kind of mentality, which is a little concerning. And I worry about people because our food supply is so compromised anyway in terms of nutritional value, our soil, it’s because our soils are compromised, right? The climate and then people over cooking, over processed and whatever else. And now they’re skipping a lot of meals. And so over time, I think you’re going to run into just like with veganism, you’re going to run into, a plethora of diminishing returns in terms of nutritional deficiencies and things like that. But, you know, we know that autophagy is very, you know, obviously helpful. You know, it’s something that helps our body, helps our cells rebuild and regenerate and all that kind of thing, which is theoretically what fasting does. But you can accomplish the exact same thing, get all of the benefits of fasting without having to be hungry, without having to forgo nutrition by just adopting a a higher fat, you know, uncompromising, uncompromising quality. Right? Ancestrally oriented, modified protein, very low carbohydrate approach to kind of a ketogenic, metabolism. And in that state, your body is very efficient at detoxification. It’s very efficient. You’re you’re generating a regular state of autophagy. But you’re also not depriving yourself of nutrition. And, you know, I, I worry a little bit about that. But in the age that we’re living in now, I don’t know, I mean, I, I guess I’m happy to say that the approach that, that I kind of developed out of, connecting a lot of different dots from different fields is ultimately. The most. It’s it’s the it’s the healthiest and most nutritionally viable way to be able to afford to eat going forward. You know, it, given the world that we’re in right now with how hard it is to afford food and how hard it is to having to find enough, you know, to eat of any given quality. You know, a dear friend of mine wrote a book called, Primal Tightwad. She was, this person who was really all about living as inexpensively and efficiently with her money as possible. And she came to visit once. And needless to say, we weren’t going out to eat because in her mind, that was a waste of money. She wasn’t opposed to spending money on things. She was opposed to wasting money for food. And she said, you know, I actually have found that this is by far the least expensive way I’ve ever found to eat optimally well in my life. Well, and that shocked me, actually, because, you know, I’m all about only organic, only free range, only uncompromising quality of food. But what she actually, you know, she was she started talking about the ways in which that was true for her and how that was working out. And I found myself sinking to one knee and clasping my hands and saying, Will you please write a book? And will you please call it primal tightwad? I have the rights to that now. She’s sort of she’s decided to kind of get out of, you know, she’s doing other things with her life. But, but.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:11:45] The book is still out there.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:11:46] But she did that, but I yeah, I have, I have that, I have that manuscript, so but she, one of the things that she did that I thought was so brilliant was she took up a week’s worth of menu from the standard American diet. You know, your Hamburger Helper is in your sodas and your chips, and you’re, you know, ordering pizza, you know, once or twice a week and, you know, whatever that was that she found within her family, that people she knew was kind of realistic, you know, and she went and she calculated down to the last penny what it cost to eat that way for a whole week, you know, tablespoon of ketchup, $0.02 or, you know, whatever. And then she took a week’s worth of menu from the way of eating. I talk about that’s very uncompromising. And at the end of it all, not only was it less expensive to eat the way I talked about, but it actually worked out to be roughly $1,500 less per person per year. Cheaper to eat like this. And the thing is that when you’re driving the majority of your actual calories from, you know, fat soluble, nutrient rich fats, you know, really, really healthy fats, from quality homes and students. And, and you’re, you’re moderating your protein intake. In other words, you’re eating enough protein to meet your fundamental requirements, but you’re not eating enough to trigger unnecessary and potentially metastatic, shall we say, cellular proliferation. So you’re just moderating your protein intake, you’re meeting your protein needs, but you’re not exceeding them, you know? And then you’re avoiding, you know, sugary, starchy foods that trigger insulin response and can also trigger, you know, oncogenic processes and things like that, especially as we age. I mean, these are things that were consistent in all of the longest lived things, from yeast to primates, anything that minimises insulin and moderate protein intake, we can eliminate because out of the three major macronutrients proteins, fats and carbohydrates, of course, the only one for which there is no scientifically established human dietary requirement, not in any textbook of physiology, not by any standard, is carbohydrates. We don’t need them. And because glucose is is an ageing is a molecule that ages us and insulin particularly minimising and doing anything to minimise that is good. We can manufacture all the glucose we need for cellular processes from a combination of protein and fat in the diet. So we don’t have to consume it ever. I’m not saying that eating the occasional handful of blueberries is an unravel you or anything like that, but I’m just sort of talking as a general practice that by doing by approaching things that way, no fat is kind of a free fuel. It’s not involved at all in, in any of the adverse processes associated with ageing, unless you’re eating fats that are really rancid, in which case that’s that’s problematic, but you’re eating quality fat. It’s a free fuel, and you can get four times the energy value from ketones that you can from glucose, you know? And so, you get a lot more efficient fuel. You get it’s like putting a log on the fire, you know, throughout the day, keeping your metabolic fires burning with relatively little effort or need to constantly, you know, replenish. And. You know, you’re getting your nutritional needs met. You’re just not exceeding them. And you’re not. You know, you’re also not spending money on crap, right? You know, you’re eliminating a lot of the things that, you know, processed food is spending, you know.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:15:28] Well, and and actually when you factor in not just the cost of the food, but the cost to your health and the environment and your productivity and your mental health, it kind of pales if all we’re comparing is if we want to take a holistic view of what we’re doing, then it it actually if if it stacks up just comparing food to food, that’s incredible. But if you then factor in the health environment productivity, mental health relationships. Yeah. Wow.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:16:00] I mean that’s what my friend, you know, Carol, in Russia where I would have thought, you know, I would have thought, yeah, the long, long term, this is going to be cheaper for people because you’re factoring in long term health costs for eating crap. Right? But no, she said day to day she was spending less money on food and she was less hungry, you know. Now, something else I’ll bring up, because I think that there are going to be significant portions of the Western world that are going to be looking at famine in the near, not too distant future. There is a war on our food supply, a war on farmers, a desire to end our access to animal source foods by whatever means necessary. It’s it’s it’s war. And with war frequently comes famine. And I think we’re going to be looking at that in a lot of places just as so. Don’t try this at home, kids. But I did this experiment. It was an end of one experiment. You know, I’m not a big fan of biohacking and that kind of thing, but I just kind of wanted to know how I would do how long I could go without eating food, you know, and how how I was going to handle that. And I actually went for 21 full days without eating a bite of anything. You know, I, I might have had a cup of coffee or tea in the morning or something like that. I drank fluids, but I wasn’t taking in any calories. Now I went into it. Mind you, already ketogenic well adapted. So for me to to start producing ketones that I was actually able to make use of was already happening. So it was a seamless transition in terms of, you know, I mean, I literally had no alteration whatsoever of my of my cognition, my energy levels, my mood. You know, all of that was really quite even for that entire time period. I was measuring my ketone and glucose levels and, you know, and all that kind of thing. It was just it was, it was an animal, an experiment. I never did write about it or anything like that. I talked about it some, though. But one thing that was clear to me was that I think, you know, like most people in the general public are probably not much more than two missed meals from a state of total metabolic, psychological, emotional chaos. Because if you’re dependent on sugar as your primary source of fuel. You need to be throwing kindling in, you know, my my wood stove analogy. You know, if you’re trying to heat your house with nothing but kindling all the time, you know, twigs and paper and, you know, a little lighter fluid here and there, as soon as you start putting stuff on the fire, you’re in trouble, right? The house is getting cold. If you’re running on, on the on that those logs, you know, and you’re just sort of have a slow burn. And of course, you know, I had enough. Well, especially as a woman, women carry a higher percentage of body fat anyway. But there I just had a constant supply of fat that my body could draw from as a way of generating the fuel I needed to keep going and what it. Well, the message in that for me was that I was able to retain clarity of thought. Right. I wouldn’t say I was all bouncing off the walls and wanting to go and play tennis and, you know, whatever, I but I wasn’t, I wasn’t fatigued and dragging around and I certainly wasn’t cranky or that thing that rhymes with itchy. I just I didn’t have those issues, you know, that most people run into when suddenly now there’s no food on the grocery shelves. Holy crap. What am I going to do? Oh my God, I’m going to chew somebody’s arm off. And then people start doing things in desperation, right, to feed themselves and their families. You know, when you’re operating as a fat burner instead of a sugar burner, you have the capacity to go for a longer period of time if there is a shortage of food, which is how our ancestors got through. You know, I mean, we face famine plenty of times, but, you know, we evolved. You know, I, I make the case for the idea that we evolved as fat burners, which allowed us to get through difficult time periods, you know, without. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:20:26] At which point did I know you mentioned moderate protein and, no. And I know that, in some circles, you know, adequate protein is, is put, you know, to give people an idea of how much they should eat. Point eight of a gram per kilogram of body weight. I find that.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:20:44] Kilogram of estimated ideal body weight. Because if you weigh £300, right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:20:51] That’s a big.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:20:51] You’re like, oh, goody, I get that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:20:53] Yeah, that’s a good one. That’s.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:20:55] So what you’re trying to do is then because, you know, most people aren’t able to go and get that that body analysis, composition analysis done, you know getting into the big tanks or you know, and I know there are electrical devices that can kind of measure some kind of displacement and give you some, you know, what your percentage of body fat to lean to, lean tissue masses, etc.. I think that most people tend to idealise, you know, the body weight that they enjoyed when they were leaner. Right. You know, so like in high school or whatever, you know. So if you take your estimated ideal body weight, you’re, you’re talking about a body weight that has a higher percentage of lean tissue mass. Right. Generally speaking. And, and I think that by using that is your litmus, you know, you’re going to come fairly close to where you want to be in terms of the amount of protein that you need in order to maintain that lean tissue mass one day to the next. And.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:22:00] I mean, that’s such an interesting distinction, or because that would ideal body weight because it I in my following the literature and talking to gastroenterologists even who are quite, believe it or not, gastroenterologist focussed on on nutrient nutrient dense foods. There is such a thing, believe it or not. Well. And yeah. No. And he and we’ve gone from 0.8 of a gram or let’s say one gram, because it’s easier to calculate.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:22:28] According to your bodybuilder, that might be the what you want to shoot for.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:22:31] Well, well, hang on 1g/kg of body weight, say ten years ago. And now he and other integrative doctors are talking about actually, we need 1.6g or two grams of carbs. And but here’s the thing. Your word, ideal body weight explains that difference because ideal body weight is very different from actual body weight.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:22:54] Exactly. And also or and so. You know, I know as people age, the doctors tend to recommend or you need more protein because you’re not digesting it as well. Well, if you’re going to start increasing the amount of protein you consume as you get older, number one, that that that’s a recipe for developing cancers later in life because of the mTOR factor. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:23:21] Because on that’s a big that’s a big statement. It is particularly coming for you particularly going just don’t say don’t say that and throw that line away.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:23:30] Oh okay. All right I won’t throw it away. But but that’s the whole point to moderating protein is to moderate the activation of that metabolic pathway that, that that basically wakes up cellular proliferation. So when we have protein in excess of what we need for just our own basic maintenance and repair. It’s a message that, oh, we have extra. We can make new cells. You know, we can reproduce now because there is there there is more. We have more than what we actually need. When you keep it to what you actually need, but don’t exceed that. To put it in modern day, maybe, kind of housing terms, but whatever that, you know, it’s like, okay, it’s a little too expensive to buy a new house right now, so let’s just fix up the one we’ve got. And that’s the that’s the mode that your body goes into is, is maintenance and repair as opposed to, well, forget the maintenance and repair. Let the let all the toxins build up in the cells, whatever. We’re going to make new cells. Well if you’re if you’re, you know, if you’re a foetus or a child or an, you know, a teenager or maybe an adult body builder or something like that, it makes sense to trigger that pathway to be able to grow and develop. Right. But if you are, say, a post menopausal female or you’re an older male where you know you don’t have the need to make so many new cells, and you’ve been subjecting yourself throughout your life to a whole bunch of toxic crap in the environment and mutagenic processes and all kinds of things that we’re exposed to that our ancestors never had to worry about. Now you get exposed to something that new, that there is mutating your cells, and you’re giving an impetus for cellular proliferation. What have you got? Right. And now we’re in a reality where where there are terrible cancers all over the place. And if you have an immune system that has been, shall we say, modified, genetically modified to not respond to mutated cells or to incoming pathogens and things like that, and then you add an impetus for cellular proliferation, right? The interesting thing about cancer is that even though there are lots of different things that can that can trigger oncogenic processes, it’s not the cancer cell in and of itself that’s a threat to you and me. It’s the proliferation of that cancer cell. And the mechanism behind metastasis is kind of the same across all cancers. Entry is is is a critical part of every oncogenic process. We require protein for maintenance and repair. But as long as we’re not consuming tremendous excesses of it to trigger cellular proliferation, well, then we’re just kind of we’re we’re fixing up the house. We’ve got and we’re not trying to create a bunch of new stuff that maybe we don’t need. That takes a lot of energy, by the way, and, takes away from our ability to detoxify and all of that. You know, people that have, you know, a cold or a sniffle. I mean, they they they will probably benefit from not eating very much, you know, or, and all that kind of thing for the time that they’re ill because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to digest, assimilate food. And, you know, if your body’s fighting the good fight, well, then it’s probably a good thing to, you know, to withhold a lot of, I mean, that’s that’s a slightly different subject. I kind of went off on that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:27:14] No, no, but but actually, it’s quite a it is interesting because we’ve started we talked about one end of the spectrum veganism and and the other end of the spectrum, of course, is another trend that has quietened down a bit recently. But it was the the Carnival Dawn.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:27:30] Oh yeah. The carnival.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:27:31] I’m guessing, ends up giving you two and possibly too much protein. Too much, you know. Talk to us what your view is.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:27:39] Right. So. So I have an article on my blog. If you go in and do a search called hyperlinks. My beef with the carnivore diet. Right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:27:47] Okay. Okay.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:27:48] And and and yes, my I do take issue with with some of it. Honestly, there is no human dietary requirement for fruits and vegetables. I know everybody thinks that’s the most important thing a person can possibly aspire to eating. It’s a side dish. You know, there are potential phytochemicals that have benefits toward various things you know can benefit various things. But I see plants as being more of a source of occasional medicine or whatever. But it also adds diversity and, and interesting, you know, more interesting flavours to a meal. I mean, how boring would it be to eat nothing but slabs and slabs of meat all day long? And of course, if you’re going hardcore carnivore, you’re not adding garlic, you’re not adding onions to that or mushrooms or, you know, or anything else. You’re just, you know, I mean, you’re going to get tired of it. Now, we are well designed to eat a diet that is made up of solely animal sourced foods. We can do that. And as long as. But very few people are going to do it primal genetically to where they’re getting the majority of their calories from fat and just moderating that protein intake. How boring would that be? I mean, we can do it, but, you know, plants add, you know, as long as you tolerate them well and you don’t have oxalate problems and, you know, whatever else and food sensitivity issues to whatever else, plants add a kind of a delightful diversity to diet and accents to what you are creating, you know, in the kitchen that that make it more pleasurable to eat, that you know, to eat those things. Now, people that I know that have suffered major oxalate problems and things like that, eating, you know, greens and they may benefit from, you know, a quote unquote modified would say carnivore diet for a while. They’re going to get tired of it. But, you know, finding the plant based foods that you can tolerate well and, and that are spiking insulin and stuff like that eventually, you know, are there are there are lots and lots and lots of benefits to a variety of things that grow in the forest and things like turmeric and garlic and, you know, all of that and myriad of compounds like where is it in whatever found in onions. So, you know, we know that there are benefits to a lot of those things. For a lot of people. Some people tolerate them well, some people don’t. So you find what you tolerate and hopefully whatever you’re adding to that meat and fat is going to enhance your enjoyment of the food and enhance your health and not compromise it in some way. But the carnivore diet thing, technically, it’s true that we don’t require plant foods, but I’m I’m just not a fan for a lot of the reasons I’ve just enumerated. So.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:30:58] So listen, Dora, we could talk and talk and I, I knew when.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:31:01] We’ve been known to this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:31:02] And we’ve been known to do so, and we’ve so certainly been it’s been so great to reconnect with you. It’s been too long. And and I love getting you back on the show because you cover such a broad range of things. I. Yeah, I mean, people should go on and join the Price Pot Engine Nutrition Foundation. Go on. Tell me, can.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:31:21] I add something for. Yes. You care because something, you know, we we’ve been remaking that foundation has been a sleepy organisation for a long time. We’ve we’ve been good stewards and curators of the work of many of these nutritional pioneers. But we haven’t done a whole lot. And that’s changing. And, you know, we really want to generate much more of a sense of community with what we’re with, what we’re doing. We have an incredible group of people now, and we have some wonderful initiatives underway, one of which I’m very proud of called the Food Freedom Project.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:31:53] Yes. I wanted to ask you. Thank you.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:31:54] Yeah. And and so the whole idea is that and, you know, of course, we have our mutual friend Helena Norberg Hodge, who is one of my favourite humans walking us. Yeah. And, you know, cause she’s been preaching for years about globalisation, decentralisation and embracing localisation and ultimately as a species that is at war with the forces that are seeking to centralise and globalise everything, in a way that benefits no one except for those, you know, in power and, you know, making money off the whole thing, that the whole idea is that the only way we get through this time period is, is by forging community and creating a parallel economy that is based upon decentralised, localised systems. And, you know, of course, we’re putting the emphasis on and food based systems. Now, there are a lot of people out there teaching people how to grow gardens in their backyard and encouraging people to save seeds and this and that. And the other thing, you know, you know, get your backyard chickens. And that’s all fine and good, except for most people really aren’t able to do it all on their own. You know, nobody’s going to serve their brains or their health long term by eating, you know, just tomatoes and zucchini and salads from the garden. And the idea behind this is to find other people within your community, your local community, who are doing different things that way. Some people are really good at gardening. Other people, they’re raising chickens or rabbits or goats or cows or, you know, or maybe, they’re really great at hunting and fishing. Maybe somebody is knowledgeable about foraging, somebody else is knowledgeable about herbal medicine, etc. and being able to bring different people doing different things together from their communities in order to create a localised food economy where people share what they’re what they’re good at. And help each other out in terms of creating things. You know, creating an abundance of food, but also creating local economic systems, based on what people can contribute to each other to get around. You know, I’m not interested in going to war with the forces attempting to go to war with this. I’m interested in making them irrelevant. Yes, right. The more of us that are kind of doing our own thing and going with our own strengths, it whatever it is that we are able to produce for food on our own. And again, I know a lot of people locally here, and some people are just they’re really into hunting and it’s great. Okay. You know, but maybe they don’t have a backyard garden. So, you know, we can help supply, you know, help them with this, you know, in exchange for that. And this also brings people together. You know, once you have the food thing down in a local community like that, you’ve kind of got a whole lot of other things together, too. You have different people with different skill sets that can help with different things, and this is how we’ve done it for most of our evolutionary history. Right? You know, you have kind of, in a lot of the television programming, there’s a sort of lone wolf mentality where the person is going to go out against nature on their own and they’re going to, you know, survive for however long or or you’ve got the people in their bunkers, you know, with buckets of beans and rice and other things that are basically just going to make them hungrier over time and give them nutritional deficiencies. And then they’ve got their wall full of ammo and, you know, whatever. And they don’t trust anybody. And they just, you know, they’re just kind of out to protect themselves. And that’s not a recipe for long term happiness either. I don’t see where that makes life worth living. That’s not the world I want to live in. I want to live as fully as a human being as possible and and be able to eat what is natural for me as a human being to consume. That hopefully helps to maximise my health and well-being, while I also help others. And I accept the health help of others to be able to, you know, to just to sustain ourselves. And so the Food Freedom Project is basically geared a lot toward the generation of localised, decentralised communities, helping people learn how to, you know, think about, how to produce their own food. Yes, we want to support our local farmers, but in a collapsed situation, which we could be facing, you know, and if we are, well, no harm done, we’re more efficient and we’re more self-sufficient. So but, in a collapse situation, that’s a lot of burden to put on just a tiny little handful of local farmers that are going to be descended upon by everyone. We want to spread that out. You know, that the so-called burden or the process of of food production, and procurement as much as possible so that everyone has something to offer and gain from everyone else. And, and so helping people understand, given your circumstances, like, even if you’re stuck in an apartment in the city, there are things you can do to start generating your own food, including animal source foods. There are things you can do that are relatively easy to do in in smaller, confined spaces that don’t make a lot of noise and all that kind of thing. But, you know, finding other people. And, again, we want to create these food freedom sanctuaries, right, in local communities where, again, people are sharing and learning together and so that nobody feels alone. And it’s a it’s a building of relationships, of trust, which is the ultimate currency for the new economy. Right. That and also just the capacity to have the, the physical, physically manifest assets necessary to hold body, mind and soul together. Right?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:38:12] Yeah.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:38:12] And communities.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:38:13] You know, Nora, that is a really inspiring and empowering vision to share with us. And a great note for us to finish on. And I just want to thank you for all that you do. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today. And we’ll have links to those. We’ll have links to the Price Pottinger Nutrition Foundation and the Food Freedom Project, and also your Primal Body, Primal Mind website.

Nora Gedgaudas [01:38:37] So people that’s wonderful. And also, primal courses.com, which is where I have my I have my yearlong certification course. I have a number of online things that way that, you know, I get wonderful feedback almost every day from people who’ve taken those things. And my year long course is one that also gets people into my private discord. Actual group, which is a marvellous group of people. Everybody is just so terrific in sharing information together and we’ve really become a family. So. Anyway. Thank you for all that out there. Yeah. Thank you Ron. It’s such a pleasure. Always a joy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:39:15] Wow. I mean so much there. I knew there would be. I love talking to Nora, and, it was a long, long, podcast, but we covered some really interesting points. One thing she said, which you may have missed, it was the MTL pathway. Small m and then capital t o r stands for, known as the mechanistic target of rape, ripe rape and missing. And now that’s a process, a protein that tells cells rapamycin is a protein that tells cells when to grow, divide and survive. MTOR often mutates into cancer cells, leading to uncontrolled tumour cell growth. That was in our discussion of, an appropriate level of, protein. Now, interestingly, I loved also a new, I think it’s worth reminding you, about the comparison of our digestive system. The human digestive system is strongly acidic. I mean, that is hydrochloric acid. And this is about two. Now, just to put that in perspective, pool acid has a pH of about one. So it’s one of the most remarkable things about our stomach and our stomach lining that it doesn’t burn a hole in our body, but it’s there for a reason, and it’s there to be able to break down proteins into that and stop the digestive process of creating breaking down proteins into amino acids for us to use and rebuild, into our own proteins. So our digestive system is acid base now, herbivores, digestive system is based on fermentation. And you will have heard that, cow cattle have full stomachs. And you look at, as Nora pointed out, a gorilla that has a huge belly that looks like a beer belly or or chimpanzees, they have a fermentation process going on there, which breaks down the, the, vegetation that they eat and makes it bioavailable. It’s also interesting to think about a book that I’ve read called Human Evolution by Robin Dunbar, and he talks about a biological diary, looking at how people or how animals, including us, spend 24 hour period. And when you think of sleep being a third of that time and you think that a lot of herbivores spent their entire day eating, grass or vegetation to gain the nutrients that you need to survive and build muscle using a fermentation process, you realise that those 8 to 10 hours of, of just simply eating and digesting food is what’s necessary to survive. One of the things, apart from increasing brain capacity, cranial capacity, was it also freed us up because animals produce nutrient dense foods that we otherwise could not digest. And that frees us up to be far more creative. And hence we find ourselves in the world we are today. Now, another thing that I feel very passionate about is the work of Western AI price, which is, Nora outlined to you that what he was all about but the west of the, price pot. And your foundation is the true repository of the work of Western AI price and Francis Pottinger and other great nutritionists. And this is a wonderful group that I’m very proud to be a member of and would very happily support. And the new Freedom Project is such an empowering and inspiring project, which I think is is worth rolling out into every community, not just to empower us to localise our food source. A topic that, as we said, Helena Norberg Hodge in a in a very recent episode, has also been talking about and Damon Gamow also been talking about with his regenerate. The regenerate is.org site. But not only is it about, old food autonomy, but it’s about connection and respect for people and countries, which was how I started this episode. And I hope you realise how important those relationships and those connections are. I think we learned that in the pandemic, but we cannot be reminded of it often enough. We’ll have links to all of those sites. I hope this finds you well, until next time. This is Doctor Ron Erlich. Hey. Well, this podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should. Selfless, an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.